Planning and Infrastructure Bill (First sitting)

Debate between John Grady and Michael Shanks

Committee stage
Thursday 24th April 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Michael Shanks]

Finally, Dhara, picking up on the questions on connections reform and the wider push in the Bill on how we build network infrastructure more quickly and the ambition of that, how critical is it to the broader energy space—particularly on the questions of energy security, bringing down bills and the wider space on our energy mix going forward—that we build more network infrastructure and get the grid working? How critical is that aspect to delivering in the 2020s, and in the 2030s in particular, to meet the demand that we are going to see, and the Government’s other objective of bringing down bills?

Dhara Vyas: That is absolutely the right question to be asking, because we will not achieve any of it unless we unblock the issues we are seeing within the infrastructure space. The reality is that with these so-called zombie projects, at least half of them are ready to move on to the next stage. In large part, that is down to the work that has been happening as part of the connections reform project. It is really important that we keep on moving with the momentum we have right now, because gaining planning permission and making progress through the new milestones that the National Energy System Operator has set out is the next big challenge for us.

We are in a really difficult position right now. Bills and debt owed by customers to energy suppliers are at a record high. We are still really feeling and living in the long shadow of the cost of living crisis, which was partly down to the energy security crisis following the illegal invasion of Ukraine. Investing in an abundance of clean power will be completely pointless unless we have the infrastructure to move it around the country, and unless we invest in clean power, we will not ultimately bring down bills to the extent that we need to. The other part of that is demand. We will see demand increase by at least sixfold. We are going to have electrification of our homes and our transport, which brings us back full circle to the need to be able to move the electricity around.

[John Grady]

Q I have a question for Christianna, Beatrice and Charlotte. To bring this to life, I am a Scottish MP, so if I am building a set of offshore wind farms in the north of Scotland, I also need to build transmission infrastructure from Scotland down to England. The holdouts of this involve connection queues, planning delays in Scotland and planning delays in England. The Bill, with the reforms in England and Scotland, seeks to reduce those delays. I want to unpick what that means for my constituents in terms of jobs and investment. How much money will be invested in the grid in Scotland over the next five to 10 years, because this Bill helps speed that investment up?

Christianna Logan: Our programme of projects to deliver for 2030 is a £22 billion investment. It is the biggest investment that we have seen in the north of Scotland probably since the second world war, so it is really significantyou’re your constituents. Our colleagues in ScottishPower have their investments in your area as well. Alongside that, there is a significant number of jobs—we expect around 6,000 jobs enabled through our investments in Scotland specifically. Just this year, we will be recruiting another 600 people into SSEN transmission to help with this transformation of our grid network.

All of that, as you say, is dependent on us getting consent to progress all these projects and the necessary regulatory approvals for the investments. We have been working very closely with Government and Ofgem on the reforms, and we believe that the proposals put forward in the Bill will take us forward in that regard. As I said earlier, the secondary legislation and the work with the Scottish Government will be critical to capturing those benefits.